Dojji

No I don't think. Especially in retrospect when it became clear that Kalish's shoulder was made of tissue paper. Besides, you're forgetting the guy who pulled our fat out of the fire, who was given his chance in the wake of the Kalish injury. And who was then immediately traded to Oakland despite the only depth ahead of him being Mr. Shoulder Surgery and Mr. One Year Contract. If you want to abuse the thumbs down emote, that's what you abuse it on. Bailey or no Bailey, the Reddick trade was a prime example of poor asset management.

Youkilis wasn't stuck in AAA in any meaningful sense. In 04, Youk managed only a .753 OPS in AAA, and they still called him up for backup duty and he wound up with about 250 PA's that year. Managed some pretty solid numbers but nothing really stood out, so they brought in some veterans who beat Youk in camp. La de da, life in a franchise that proceeds cautiously with young players when given a choice. In 05, he started the season in AAA, lit it up, and added himself to the mix in Boston despite Mueller, Millar, and Olerud dominating the depth chart ahead of him. After that, he was full time in the bigs. The closest thing he ever was to seriously "stuck" was the first half of 05, and that's a decision you make when a rookie is good-not-great and you're trying to win a second World Series. And even then, he was allowed to make a case for himself when every other option was no better than he'd proven he could be, and won himself playing time as a result. All he had to do in the end is make the best use of the chances he was given to make himself an option in the eyes of the franchise. With that accomplished, a path to the bigs would eventually open for him. And it did. Try again.

Coincerning? Yes. Anything more than that? heck no. He struggled in his first chance at consistent big league PT. A lot of players do that in their first 200 PA's. If you're using it to say now might be a good time to withhold judgment on Lavarnway becoming the next big thing, I'd call that reasonable. If you're prepared to give up on Lavarnway on that basis, you're moving too soon based on too little information

Considering that Lavarnway is projected as a DH who can play catcher by the same people who don't project Xander to play SS? I'm not sure your position is as solid as you're making it out to be. Right now the consensus at Soxprospects is that Lavarnway is a fair bet to be the next Matthew LeCroy, but asking him to start as a fulltime catcher would be ludicrous.

Until he switches positions, I stand by my sttement.

If we had a young catcher as talented as Bogaerts, the same conversation would be happening with Lavarnway

At least. At least half a year too early. That's the best scenario with Bogaerts going right up to AAA and killing everything thrown at him, and displaying everything the Sox brass needs to see on the defensive end. Realistically, given the way this team prefers to develop their prospects, and the fact that nothing ever goes entirely according to plan, we're likely looking at more like one and a half years. Wouldn't even shock me too much to see Bogaerts break camp and start the season in AA this year, until he forces a promotion. We have little to gain from being insanely overaggressive promoting this kid. Let things develop in their own time. To put it another way, which would you really rather do, start his clock now and get 2 years of Bogaerts learning on the job, and having him start to really click just as he gets expensive, or a more conservative pattern that has the team starting Bogaerts' clock after another 1000 AB's or so when he's more likely to be productive for all 6 years of team control?

I think bogaerts is going to be called up midseason. In 2014. BSN07 is right. It's too early to start the clock. Even if Drew is hurt, right now I'd rather mix and match Ciriaco and Iglesias and give Bogaerts a chance to gain more reps in the minors. He's the most talented SS we've had this side of Nomar, but that's all the more reason to be intelligent with when, where, and how you make use of him. I know fans want to see this kid on the field. Heck, I do too. But there's a time and a place, and right now is neither.

It's at least half a year too early to rush Xander Bogaerts to the bigs. He's only going to be 20 and has no AAA experience. There's more risk than reward in displaying impatience with him at this juncture. I do agree that signing Drew is a sign that they've largely given up on Iglesias. Drew is a pretty solid stopgap, and as long as his health issues don't come back again, I don't see a hole opening up at SS this year. And of course, if Drew is more than sufficient at SS, like I think he might be, I'd have nothing against extending him until Bogaerts is ready, and then trading him once Bogaerts shows that he is in fact ready. I don't like counting on rookies in the offseason. It tends to blow up on you. Always have that veteran guy, even if you fully intend to trade him or reduce his role as soon as the kid is ready.

... which is not Papelbon's fault and should not reflect on him

Because what happens if neither of them win? Are you really going to want a choice between a guy who hits .150 at the big league level and a guy who can't hack it defensively? Besides, the price tag on Drew was exceedingly reasonable for a man with that kind of talent as a two way shortstop. I have no problem with bringing him in on a short term basis. I think that might have been Cherington's savviest move this offseason. Because, to puit it quite bluntly, the Netherlands has no one who would be as useful at 3B as the replacement for Bogaerts is at SS. Xander can play either position just fine, and they can scare up an Iglesias type better than they can find a more effective corner infielder.

There is literally no real world application of cursive these days and hasn't been in any practical sense since the invention of the typewriter. The internet was the death blow, but manuscript writing was dead a long time before that. I'd say your prof is stuck in the last century, but the typewriter is older than that. More like the century before last.

When you bring in elite talent you wind up paying for it. The worst contracts are thee ones you pay for nonelite talent, as if it was elite. Papelbon's contract is just fine because he is in fact a consistently elite closer. Paying most of the league's closers Papelbon money would indeed be foolish.

I'm saying that the Royals would kill to have him. The guy I wanted to trade to the Royals was Brock Holt. For pity's sake, give me some credit.

It always amuses me when someone whines about the level of vitriol in a thread when they've been a contributing factor all along. This is also part of the thing a700 does. Perhaps this isn't the best venue for all this, but when something is administering a subtle poison, even the best possible time to apply the tourniquet is never really a good time. I am sick and tired of you sligning passive-agressive barbs and then trying to hind behind plausible deniability. It ends, a700, one way or the other.

If the shoe fits, a700. You're not above a bit of misrepresentation yourself. This thread is exhibit A. So how about you lose the marytr act?

Depthwise we stand up to any team in this league on paper. How it falls out will be rather heavily dependent on de la Rosa's ability to contribute in the second half. Any reversals there combined with multiple SP injuries could expose us somewhat. On the whole we don't have much to complain of. Of course we can't exactly call up a guy who's an immediate #3 starter, we got kinda lucky there with Gabbard in 07 when Schilling went down and Lester was still recovering, and we have been rather unlucky since on the whole. But that's not what they depth guys are there to do. They're there to give you a chance to win enough games when they pitch that by the time your mainline guys are healthy, you haven't lost too much ground. No team is going to be carried by its depth. (I happen to think Gabbard was the unsung hero of 2007. If he hadn't stepped up and become a nice little #4 starter for us when Schill went down, and had instead been a bogstandard replacement starter, there's NWIH we win the division that year, and that changes the playoff picture significantly. He was on track to have the best individual performance by a Boston rookie starter that year with that CGSO, despite the rather stiff competition, up until Buchholz' no-no. What a pity he got hurt the next year with Texas. If he had stayed healthy he could have had a nice career for himself)

a700 does ridiculous. He does it well. His greatest genius is in finding ways to frame ridiculous statements so that they're rhetorically difficult to counter without playing into his hands and permitting him to label you. It's a media trick -- one of the oldest in the book. I dunno if a700 ever worked for a tabloid, but he probably should. It's sleazy, it's dishonest, I've seen it before and I hate it every time.

If you focus entirely on the best moves made by 29 other teams, and compare that one for one with every move made by the Red Sox, it's going to be a rare offseason indeed where our efforts stack up to that kind of poorly thought out analysis.

Teams made moves. We call them "improvements" because people are smallminded like that and anyway there's no way to tell who really improved until after the fact, which is boring.

I actually think they did a fair bit to strengthen their rotation. However, they didn't add to it on top, which is going f frustrate fans like a700 who don't get baseball, expect the GM to come up with a way to make a team a sure thing, and set themselves up for frustration on top of frustration when that doesn't happen.

Most of those people have a standard for acedom that resembles Pedro. Especially because we actually got Pedro so soon after we lost Clemens. The interregnum between Clemens and Pedro was pretty much 1 year (97). Beyond that one year, we pretty much had a generatonal caliber starter playing ace for us between 1984 and 2004 -- a 20 year run. That's going to set people up for unreasonable expectations simply because they know no better It might be decades before we see that guy in Boston again.

It's a matter of drawing a conclusion, then crafting definitions to match the conclusion. In a way it's understandable. People remember Pedro a little too well -- and to a somewhat lesser extent they remember Clemens' heyday. What they don't realize is that those were not aces. They were generational pitchers the line of which you'll see maybe a couple of active at any given time. It's just a different plane of reality compared to a textbook ace, which all an ace is is a guy who would be the best starter on most playoff caliber teams and is the leader of the rotation. If you want an example of a talent that was an ace without being a generational pitcher? Look at Jack Morris or Curt Schilling.

Sure he has. The fact that you tried to move the goalpost like a champion doesn't mean he missed his field goal.

At his best, Jon Lester is a #1, demonstrably competitive with a host of other pitchers presumed to be #1's. The only reason we don't call him a #1 is because we remember Pedro, and assume that all #1's are supposed to look like that. Not many of the best starting pitchers in the history of the game could come close to Pedro though, so it's time for people to reset their expectations of what a real #1 starter is supposed to look like.